IEA report: EU poised to overtake US as biggest oil importer

The United States is expected to soon lose its title as the world's biggest oil importer.

A new report by the International Energy Agency said Wednesday that the European Union is poised to pass the United States in its oil imports in 2015, The New York Times reported.

The EU will hold the title of biggest oil importer for five years, according to the report's expectations, until China takes the lead in 2020.

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The U.S. demand for oil will drop through 2035, Bloomberg reported.

“The U.S. would be less and less vulnerable to oil price shocks,” Fatih Birol, the IEA chief economist, said at a news conference in London. He said that new efficiency standards for vehicles and an increasing in domestic oil and natural gas production will cause the United States to have to import less oil.

However, despite the decline in the United States, the increase in oil imports elsewhere will affect cost and supply, he said.

“But increasing reliance on oil imports elsewhere heightens concerns about the cost of imports and supply security.”

The report, called the World Energy Outlook 2011, said that countries like the United States and in the EU will rely on an increasingly fewer number of nations that supply oil.